Fairyville (28 page)

"I want you," he said. "I want you so bad I could screw you right where you stand."

"But?"

"But I want Alex to watch me fuck you even more. I want him to see my cock push into you. I want him to know he's not the only one who can take pleasure from someone else."

"And what—" She cleared her thickened throat. "While you're 'taking your pleasure,' what would you want Alex to do?"

Bryan leaned in, his bicep bunching as he bent his arm. "I'd make sure he couldn't do anything but watch until his dick was ready to cry. I'd make sure he was so hot he couldn't see straight. And then, when he was an inch away from screaming with frustration, I'd want us both to do him."

"That last part doesn't sound like punishment."

Her hands had slid to either side of his ribs, holding him lightly but not so lightly that she didn't feel his heart thumping hard and quick. He moved his mouth over hers, the feathery touch tingling on her lips.

"It isn't a punishment," he whispered. "It's a fantasy he's never managed to live out."

Zoe's pussy clenched so hard she felt like she was coming.

She was wet, and hoarse, and so ready for sex she could barely breathe. This wasn't just Alex's fantasy, it was hers. To be with him and another man. To have that other man desire her. No doubt her yen to do this was completely screwy, but to her it seemed the ultimate re-empowerment, the ultimate exorcism of the pain he'd caused her all those years ago.

"You forgive him?" she managed to ask.

Their faces were so close that when Bryan shook his head, his nose bumped hers. "I don't know. I only know I can't hate him. I understand what it's like to want and want and finally get the chance to have."

Zoe wet her lips, the tip of her tongue accidentally touching his. He sucked a quick breath and then licked her back, just enough to curve his tongue inside the softness of her upper lip. He was masculine to the nth degree, and yet
she
wanted to capture his mouth and plunder it like a warrior's prize. This aggressive heat she felt for him was crazy, and it only grew with not giving in to it. She wanted it to grow, to blaze so high it incinerated any shred of conscience that could hold her back. Sensing this perhaps, Bryan drew his mouth away.

"Is this something you'd want to do?" he asked raggedly.

She slid her hands down his sides, over the soaking cotton of his shirt, over the dip of his navel and his clinging jeans. Their front was stretched across his erection, a hard, curved ridge that pulsed beneath the heavy drag of her thumbs.

"Yes," she said and watched his eyes flash with fire.

Zoe held off until Friday evening, though her body had been itching to go with Bryan as soon as he'd asked.

"Don't tell Alex what we're planning," she'd pleaded before he left. "I need time to prepare myself."

"Understood," he'd said, his face still dark with arousal, his fingers playing with a curl of her hair. "I hope you realize I'm going to be like this until I get inside you, because nothing's going to satisfy me short of that."

She'd smiled, flattered by his half-serious claim, and pulled his head down for a deep, wet kiss. This time, he'd let himself really take her mouth, and the kiss had slipped down her pleasure channels a lot more smoothly than she'd expected. Alex's friend kissed hard but nice, and she hadn't been able to keep from speculating what else he might be hard and nice at.

She'd been useless at work all day, actually giving one of her clients a slew of messages from the wrong spirit, until the woman's confused expression clued her in that she wasn't being her usual accurate self. Zoe apologized and refused to let the woman pay, but her lack of focus was telling.

As many times as she'd wondered what making love to Alex would be like, her most powerful fantasies, the ones that stole into her mind uninvited, didn't involve him and her alone.

It was funny—and possibly disturbing—but in the two years she'd known Magnus, she'd dreamed of bedding just him much more often than she'd dreamed of bedding just Alex.

So I'm perverse
, she thought, attempting to shrug it off.
It stands to reason I'd be more exclusively attracted to a man who's playing hard to get
.

Naturally, this was the moment her contrary brain chose to send her a clit-scorching image of all
three
men in bed with her.

Giving up, Zoe rescheduled her last appointment, waved goodbye to Teresa through the cafe door, and went home early. If she was going to live out this fantasy, she was going to do it right. She was going to shower and shave and moisturize every inch of her tingling skin. She was going to beg Raj el to help with her hair, and she was going to pack a discreet black bag with toys she hadn't been able to resist buying, but had always wondered if she'd ever use.

Fairyville already knew she was eccentric. She saw no reason why she shouldn't be kinky, too.

Bryan had been kidding about staying hard until he took her, but the joke hadn't been far off. He found himself unable to think of anything but Zoe, and while he'd always had a healthy libido, this intense preoccupation with a woman was unusual. Alex had been sleeping—or pretending to—when Bryan returned to their new hotel room, this one fitted out with queen-size beds. Bryan had taken one for himself without a second thought, though Alex probably would have welcomed the chance to help him out with a release or two. Maybe the reason was part anger, but Bryan realized he didn't want him to.

He only wanted to rack Zoe.

Even when Alex padded to the bathroom the next morning with an erection the size of Flagstaff shoving out his briefs, Bryan had pretended not to see. He'd told Alex to visit the newspaper office without him, saying he wanted to check some of their interviewees' backgrounds on the internet. Though he'd meant to do this, he ended up in bed with the porn channel on, stroking his persistent hard-on while he watched the men get busy and imagined all the women as Zoe.

He should have come a hundred times, given how much he'd played with himself, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to push over the brink. He knew what he wanted. When he got it, he wanted to be really revved up for it.

Zoe called the room at five. The sound of her voice was like a million tiny rockets going off underneath his skin. She was ready, she said, but nervous. Would he consider picking her up and driving her?

The idea that she wouldn't bring a getaway vehicle delighted him. He'd have her all night.
They'd
have her all night.

She was waiting in front of her house when he pulled up, clutching a small black satchel to her side. Unable to stay where he was, he got out of the car, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her so deep and long it was like he wanted to fuck her through her mouth.

"Wow," she said when he finally let her go to breathe.

Her starry-eyed astonishment made him feel like a million bucks—which wasn't to say her side of the kiss hadn't been spectacular. There was nothing quite like being kept up with to bring out the best in a horny man.

"Alex wasn't back yet when I left," he said, his hands enjoying a slide down her silken arms.

"Do you think he will be by the time we arrive?"

"I don't know." His cock thumped harder at the prospect of Alex waiting, of Alex looking up and seeing him with Zoe. Bryan's prick was rigid, absolutely in pain. He wanted to take her now, against the car, in sight of anyone who drove by. She was wearing a stretchy, sleeveless red velvet minidress that plunged over her creamy cleavage and bared her mile-long legs nearly to her cunt. Sensing his rather obvious interest, she tugged the hem in embarrassment. That drew a growl from low in his chest even as he grinned.

"I don't usually dress like this," she confessed.

He laughed and kissed her mouth quick and hard. "Alex is going to die when he sees those red hooker shoes."

"You really think he'll say yes to watching us?"

Still smiling, Bryan cupped her anxious face, his eyes burning unexpectedly at how sweet she was. "He'll say yes," he assured her, not a doubt in his mind. "He'd have said yes if you'd cut holes in a grocery bag and worn that."

"Well, good," she said, blowing out a shaky breath. "Because maybe we should strategize on the way."

Alex hated empty hotel rooms. An empty house he was used to, but coming back to these uninspired surroundings after spinning his wheels all day felt like a booby prize.

On the bright side, no one at the paper had recognized him, but the stupid
Fairyville Courier
hadn't even had microfiche. He'd be scrubbing newsprint from his nails for days, and all he had to show for his troubles were a handful of crazy interviews some dewy-eyed oral history student had done with a bunch of dotty octogenarians. Wish fulfillment was all they were, mixed with a mishmash of folktale. Fairies were not riding into Fairyville on great white stallions to debauch young women in the woods.

Never mind the strange things he and Zoe had seen at the falls. There was no such thing as fairies. All right, there were the little fairies Zoe was friends with, who were probably some sort of energy that only looked like Tinkerbell because this was what Alex expected. Whatever they were, they weren't lying in wait in the forest for young maidens to happen by.

Even his open mind had to have limits.

This conclusion didn't satisfy him any more than his day had. Uneasy with his thoughts but not wanting to wallow in them, Alex emptied his pockets onto the bed—
his
bed—and stared at the phone. Bryan had booked them into a nice hotel: room service, bellhops, the works. But without Bryan here—even a resentful, cold-shouldering Bryan—none of its amenities appealed.

Seeing as he had no idea what Bryan was up to, room service was probably his best dinner plan. His appetite nonexistent, he stretched out on the mattress instead… which let a different sort of unappealing musing in.

Bryan had every right to be upset with him, just like—strictly speaking—Alex had had every right to sleep with Zoe. He and Bryan weren't boyfriends, they were strictly friends with benefits. Sadly, these very reasonable justifications didn't lessen his discontents.

Neither Bryan nor Zoe had checked in with him today. Alex hadn't been what you'd call a people person since he'd left high school, but he was dismayed to discover how much he wanted contact with these two.

He was pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets when the door lock clicked and Bryan walked in.

"Hey," he said as Alex sat up with his heart pounding.

"Hey," Alex said back, and then, "
Zoe
."

Her name came out a little breathless, but he couldn't help that, considering what she had on. He had never, in his life, seen her wear such a blatantly sexy dress. The way it fit her was combustible, cut down to there and up to here and probably grounds for arrest if she lingered in the lobby long.

"You two going out?" he asked, confused but trying not to show it. He took in Zoe's four-inch heels with a silent
ulp
. Women in shoes like that were a weakness he didn't need right now. "If you are, I think Bryan might have to play bodyguard."